How do you make your golf retail store stand out?

07/02/2025

The Buckinghamshire Golf Club has a successful retail shop that is renowned for its attractive in-store displays and range of apparel choices. Director of Golf Ciar Porciani insists that investing in shop displays reaps rewards in customer attraction, retention and spending. Here he shares his innovative ideas on merchandising displays.

When it comes to enticing golfers into a retail store, many shop managers under-estimate the impact that the first impression can have on that initial draw to spend. Whether that be a member seeing a perfectly coordinated outfit in a shop window or walking into a store and being struck enough by the garments on display in the entrance to make an impulse purchase. It is something that The Buckinghamshire Golf Club’s Director of Golf Ciar Porciani believes is a vital investment. Not only in order to make your store front attractive and interesting to potential customers, but to give you the opportunity to continually refresh the look of the store from season to season.

“For us it all starts with the buying process, planning ahead and coordinating colour stories with suppliers,” explains Porciani. “When looking at their collections, we decide colour palettes we want to feature throughout the year and purchase a colour story for each display to tie together. This helps us coordinate purchases and displays.”

Porciani says that many retail store purchasers are guilty of opting for the bland choices - the greys and navy’s, that simply don’t stand out. “Generally, us guys like to stick to grey and navy’s so these colours are part of core collections for us, but we do add in bright collections to add colour to the shop.”

Although essential for adding a pop of colour to an otherwise boring shop, Porciani admits that the brighter garments are harder to sell, but nevertheless explains why their inclusion is useful: “An orange sweater and cap in the store front display will be slow movers but these will draw in our members attention to get a sale on another product, like the pack of orange golf balls we put next to them.”

Porciani says that the best retailers plan their colour stories for the year at the pre-order stage and then go to suppliers and ask them what garments and accessories they have within those colour palettes that complement the stories, to include in the displays.

“We use our suppliers to select further products to tie into the collections, this is how we build an attractive display. We’ll order say four colour stories from a brand. Start with two on display in the spring and then have a summer changeover and the same again in the autumn/winter, constantly refreshing our displays, every six to eight weeks.”

This means the best way to put together an attractive window display is to think in terms of ‘outfits’ instead of just displaying individual items.

“We style outfits to show how clothing can be mixed and matched. Ladies are great at matching clothes, guys not so much! Showing men, when in the shop, what clothing works well together certainly helps with additional sales. I’m often surprised by the uplift in purchasing from men who I would never have thought would pick up say an orange t-shirt, after we’ve shown them in our display how great it looks paired with a simple grey trouser.”

The Buckinghamshire store looks more akin to a window display you may see at a Harrods rather than a high street shop, to appeal to the affluent clientele that filter through the doors. Simple, in-expensive additions make a profound impact on the professionalism of the shop look.

“We incorporate seasonal elements like pumpkins and leaves in autumn, Christmas decorations and lights, to add visual interest and help display our colour story,” explains Porciani. “Our autumn additions were purchased from Amazon for less than £50. All new this year but will last us years to come.”

Another important element to building displays, according to Porciani, is to “layer” them up. “Sweaters nicely folded so you can see the club logo, placed neatly on top of each other, along with a cap on top looks fantastic. It’s important to learn how to fold a sweater too, to get a straight edge and the logo on show.

“We try to work in pyramids so the item in the middle is the tallest, working down from each side. I learnt this from my days at Trump Turnberry. Trump's head merchandiser Tanya was really keen on this and ensuring that the counter isn't blocked when building a pyramid display.”

Colour stories for 2025…

Red makes a return this year. We haven’t had it on display for two years as it’s the hardest colour to sell but it’s coming back, as is a pink palette for the summer.

Porciani’s retail display secrets:

Make sure the shop has sufficient lighting. I see too many shops, especially at this time of year when winter light is poor, that are just too dark to effectively see their displays.
Keep displays clean and tidy. It sounds simple but I see a lot of dusty shops out there!
Refresh the shop on a regular basis. We are a private members club so we see the same 350 members, with approximately 3000 different guests through the door each year. Refreshing the displays is key for us and we will change our front display on a monthly basis with all other displays moving approximately every 6-8 weeks.
Allow your team to be creative. It’s great to see what the team can find to tie into the colour stories. Orange Taylormade balls were found and added to the autumn collection, for instance. What was a slow-moving ball suddenly flew off the shelf.
Follow other clubs on social media. American merchandise their shops extremely well. I see a lot of clubs in America employ a Director of Merchandise or a Merchandise Manager. Something we don't see here in the UK but would be hugely beneficial. I follow many country clubs and get inspiration from their store displays.
Reluctant member spenders? Why not build them a style and put the outfit into their locker to try on. This is something I do for members from time to time. It’s a special touch and they love it.
Bargain hunters? We all know the members who won’t spend unless they think they are getting a deal. I have a “leftovers guy” that I always put an end of season 70% off apparel drop together for. He loves it.